On the Wing
by The Blue Footed Booby
Summary: The conclusion of The Bird of Time, in which Yeirumis reads and ruminates upon Kino's memoirs.
1. Chapter 1

(This is part six of _The Bird of Time._ Are you looking for part five? It's in the crossover section. — BfB)

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><p><strong><em>On the Wing<em>**

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><p>If Yeirumis could still sigh in contentment, he would. Both he, and through their datalink, Ashita, were reviewing the thorough and surprisingly personal memoir of Kino the Traveler.<p>

He'd deliberately avoided downloading the information directly, and instead called up a scan of the actual pages of the book. Yeirumis wanted to see the physical relic, and experience vicariously the joy Kino must have felt on seeing her thoughts in print. He also wanted to savor the half-forgotten flavor of the old language, the old thoughts. He paused often, to relish the memories her words awoke.

Until the account of the Kelbright massacre, Hermes had enjoyed a rich nostalgia, remembering his time alongside his rider oh, so achingly long-ago, in a world that had ceased to be.

But then came the massacre, the intervention of the mysterious UFO, and entirely new memories. Yeirumis alone, in all the cosmos, could fully explain that mystery. Only he could remember the less happy timeline, or eigenstate, in which Kino had died a noble death. And being dead, she could not make her speech to the Tatana. It felt strange, a poignant mix of revelation and pining, as he remembered her life after Kelbright — for the first time.

Her lecture had not immediately ended the war, of course. But it grabbed attention, setting the stage for the heart-rending testimony of the Choi children. This came at the exact moment the Tatana offensive culminated. Like a wave charging a beach, it hesitated, then fell back. With this reversal, thousands of the enemy had a change of heart, surrendered to amnesty, and found mercy.

The Tatana attack had been doomed from the start, of course. Yeirumis could not consult the actual figures, as those records never did exist in their current reality. Kino had hastened the end of the war by his estimate six months, and saved countless lives. She made a difference.

But her unwanted fame grew, and her life of safe anonymity was over, and with it, Kino's Journey as they had known it.

As he read, Yeirumis "remembered," to his growing delight, events he'd shared with Kino, even as he still recalled the long, dull period of mourning her. In his grief, he had not taken another mortal consort for decades. It had been Tisiphone who'd intervened, and given him his new companion. The feud with the Kindly Ones was truly over.

Tisiphone died in a great conflict, as can happen even to immortals. Gia, who'd died with her in the fire, found herself transfigured into the role. Now she too plied the stars, and Yeirumis remained on warm terms with the Fury, though he saw her rarely. She did her job well, for her office grew irrelevant as humanity matured, and she'd been called to cultivate another promising young species.

As often observed in such cases, his new, altered history had regained its course — his string of companions remained ultimately unchanged, just as in the full arc of human history, Kino's continued existence had only made life a little better, for a little while. But even that small improvement must be hailed as an astounding and rare accomplishment!

Yeirumis laughed with delight (well, the current equivalent, a less common but more intense emotional state) at the account of Kino's dreamlike experience in Celestia's realm. Humanity would not discover the means to vicariously experience alternate realities for almost a millennia. It made perfect sense though, given how her temporal moorings had been disrupted, that she'd endure such a thing. That it had in turn inspired her speech... in this he sensed a sublime symmetry, even the guiding hand of providence — or perhaps Celestial wisdom? He resolved to ask her (or rather Helios, her manifestation here) when next they met.

("He" briefly paused to appreciate the current lingual protocol that allowed for non-gender-specific states such as theirs.)

The Tatanan government collapsed and, in this case, those who'd given themselves up to the amnesty returned to rehabilitate their nation.

Once Kino no longer needed to fear bounty-hunters, she emerged from her seclusion. She used the gift of song she'd been given, and her unwanted celebrity, and transformed them into a career. Her fears, not least any fear of appearing onstage, had been extinguished by her rite of passage. She reinvented herself as a singer, a traveling troubadour to use an older term, fulfilling at last her childhood ambition.

The zenith of her success was the famous concert in New Relsumia, where the now-prosperous Tatana gave her the welcome of a folk hero.

Yeirumis accessed the data banks, and found the entire performance recorded for posterity. He felt (absurdly in retrospect,) shocked to see Kino as he'd never seen her, well into middle age, her youthful charms faded.

With that triumphant farewell tour, Kino retired from public life, wealthy and happy. She could never again be an anonymous traveler. Being catered-to as a celebrity denied her the joys of seeing a people authentically. Still, at her age, could she really have endured her former ragamuffin lifestyle?

Soon after, Kino could no longer travel, and she knew Hermes was ever-restless. She found a backwards land far from those that knew her, and created a new name and identity for herself. On that wistful but not melancholy day, when she gave up being Kino the Traveler, she also gave away her most precious possession: Hermes.

Kino's only child had put her mother's entire life in the shade in a single day, when the Elevator took her daughter up to a waiting starcraft, and a very different set of adventures. Far from resenting this, the matron beamed with pride.

But because her daughter chose to go where she and Hermes (at least then) could not follow, it fell to Hermes to choose his new rider.

Hermes had been Kino's last tether. Hers was an old soul. Like a tutor guiding a clever student to her final exams, Hermes had successfully guided Kino to her destination. This time, she would "graduate." Just as students never return to their old schools, Kino would never again return to this realm.

She understood. She had awakened, and she had finished her coffee. Time to wash her cup, and put it away.

Yeirumis absorbed all this new knowledge, all this fresh experience, with boundless joy, and felt very pleased with himself. As a gesture, he transmitted with all his considerable power, a portion of Kino's words to the hostiles who'd fired upon them, who'd pursued them even to the very edge of an event horizon. They would easily translate it, and perhaps the message would do still more good. Besides, it made him feel happy knowing that Kino's voice echoed outward in a spherical wave through the endless midnight, a voice once silenced an aeon ago, from a world whose sun had now boiled its seas away — the wisdom of a woman who'd pleaded for decency, and in doing so, had reclaimed her humanity.

_I remember someone once said, 'only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.' If only that were true! Being hurt makes you hate, being made a helpless victim makes you hate. And when hatred consumes you, you can become that which you hate most._

_We live in a world of discord. It makes us jaundiced, and disenchanted. The only way out is to forge new, healthy bonds of fraternity, based upon candid truth, loyalty to each other and to our ethics, generosity and kindness for those less fortunate. And for pity's sake, learn to laugh at your own faults. Sometimes by accepting our imperfections, we can turn them into our unique strength._

_Only by valuing and cultivating these virtues can we find, or even see, what we've been missing all along — harmony: each of us singing our own notes, in our own voices, together. Only then can we build a better world._

Her ancient plea would echo across the dizzying expanse of time and space, to what effect even he could not predict. Perhaps some primitive species would hear and translate, and think hers the voice of a goddess. Yeirumis in his long ages had seen worse things, and less likely.

He watched as Ashita ruminated upon her words, his internal systems automatically translating in microseconds. The youth expressed his approval, and Yeirumis felt a surge of affection for this, his new rider.

It was time to put Kino away, lest he neglect Ashita. Such an exciting time! What had once been named "Andromeda" was on the verge of colliding with their native galaxy, bringing with it an incalculable wealth of new things to experience, learn, and appreciate.

"Where to?" Yeirumis asked in the old tongue.

Ashita, a youth of intellect and promise even by this era's standards, summoned up a polychronal/dimensional navigational pointer, and linked it to a simple Brownian motion algorithm.

"Shall I spin the stick?" he said.

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><p><strong><em>Ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears<em>**

**_today of past regrets and future fears._**

**_Tomorrow — why, Tomorrow I may be_**

**_myself with Yesterday's sev'n thousand years._**

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><p>.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

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><p><strong><em>Afterword<em>**

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><p>This might well be the final entry in my <em>Kino's Journey<em> stories. The anime was already obscure when I began, and is rapidly fading away. A pity! Also, I think I've just about told all the stories I can find for her. (Ah, but where have we heard that before?) That's a good feeling at least... I've fulfilled her potential. Still, traffic hits have been gratifyingly lively, mainly in the US, but who'd guess I would build a decent fanbase in... Singapore?! Wow!

Anyway, let's start with the usual explanatory notes.

"Land of Observances" was directly inspired by the terrific 1970's film _The Wicker Man._ "Somer Insel" is of course Christopher Lee himself, Lord Summerisle. In researching the story, I was startled how often human sacrifice turns up in the past: Incas, Hebrews, Russians, Greeks, and Celts all practiced it at one time, leading me to wonder if it was, long ago, truly universal.

Despite an almost sado-masochistic subtext, by having the cult theatrically mime killing Kino I could give Anthony Schaffer's story a new, more contemplative spin. I didn't quite know where to put the story, but eventually I decided it belonged first. It felt the most faithful to Sigsawa's style.

The language "Yeirumis" speaks in "The Bird of Time" was inspired by Lojban, a fascinating constructed language that I wish I had the time to learn.

The name "Kino" is a homophone for the Japanese word for "yesterday." Naturally, "Ashita" means "tomorrow."

Yeirumis once again hits the plot-point that he's reforged from the chariot used by Arjuna and Krishna in the _Bhagavad Gita._

Yeirumis' poetry is from one of my favorites, _The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_, or the quatrains of Omar the Tentmaker.

Dr. Brown's Flux Capacitor broke the time barrier _in Back to the Future._

I made up the Temple of Ki-lee-lei, though it's inspired by the Taj Mahal and Angkor Wat.

Had to do a lot of research to make the piloting sound authentic. It was inspired by Arthur Hailey's _Flight into Danger._ The reason this sort of story hasn't been told since the '50s is exactly because of autopilot technology. Planes literally fly themselves these days. I simply thought it'd be funny for Kino to worry herself half to death in her ignorance.

"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself, home," is the most famous line of Basho's book of haiku poetry_, Back Roads through Far Towns._

Ventnor and Biggin Hill were radar installations during the Battle of Britain.

Xstylus, one of my kind reviewers, asked for "a more thorough story on how Kino ends (as you hinted in an epilogue to the Haibane story.)" That planted the seed for "Flowers and Smoke." In my mind, Kino really was going to perish in a fiery massacre, passing Hermes on just as the First Kino had. But... I guess I'm too optimistic at heart to tell such a story.

Obviously, by this point the Renewah were stand-ins for the Nazis. It wouldn't be until I sat down to write "Aegis" that I realized they were really the Tatana.

I'd foreshadowed the Scarlet Pimpernel all the way back in "Reprise." I barely even bothered to disguise "Mr. Flores," and the story is an homage to Baroness Orkzy.

Hope you all laughed at Yeirumis's surprise reappearance. TV Tropes calls these "brick jokes," and I'm altogether too fond of 'em.

When one reads cosmology and quantum mechanics, one soon encounters the mind-bending ideas of parallel dimensions, alternate timelines, and so on. Jerome Bixby claimed forever this story-telling trope with his brilliant _Star Trek_ episode, "Mirror, Mirror." None of it is as far-fetched as it might seem.

I took the opportunity to salute some of the other crossovers in the _Kino's Journey_ section. She encounters Haruhi Suzumiya_, Doctor Who_, and _My Little Pony_, among others. I particularly enjoyed the _Princess Tutu_ tale. (The writer of the Who story never did write another chapter; I might just do it myself.)

Captain Forester appears again, even more obviously Captains Hornblower and Picard this time.

I'm afraid that the more time I spent with the primitives in _The Iliad_, the less patience I had for them. I saw the chance to vent, and to spin a little satire, with "The Aegis of Zeus." The events here happened just as in the original, albeit seen through my jaundiced eye. And yes, there really is no definite answer to what the heck an aegis is.

Bedford, Warwick and Talbot featured in the famous St. Crispian speech from Shakespeare's _Henry V_.

The death of the watchdog Argus at Hermes' hands is detailed in, among other places, Ovid's _Metamorphosis_.

Why on Earth would I cross-over with _My Little Pony?_ Because it was fun? Seriously, it moves me as _Haibane Renmei_ did, though for different reasons. The show can be enjoyed at a superficial level, but yields all sorts of interesting symbolism for those so inclined. I tried to offer some intriguing examples. Someday I'd love to ask the writers in question how much of that symbolism is conscious, and how much emergent.

I had a rough draft of "A Horse in the Race" almost a year before I published it. The ponies aired an episode called "Daring Don't" that confounded my plans. (I'd originally meant for Kino to appear in Equestria, and for everypony to confuse her with the fictional Daring Do.) Rewriting that boondoggle took forever! Sadly, Dave Polsky's episode also left a trail of strained credulity and plot-holes. The fascinating pony analysis community provided a checklist of points that begged to be addressed, so here's a grateful little wave to Tommy, Digi, Kim, Quill, Tony, and Dr. Wolf.

"Horse" was my most personal tale yet. To my sadness, in real life I've caused the discomfort the ponies feel around Deedee. Writing this story helped me understand myself a little better, and I hope will help my audience relate to those who might be like me.

At the same time, I feel myself drawn strongly to the values offered in Equestria. It challenges me, so how better to answer it than to inject such a contradictory and paradoxical personality as Deedee's into its milieu?

Deedee's plan is a combination of Heinrich Schliemann's scheme to find Troy (he did!) and a similar scene from H. R. Haggard's _King Solomon's Mines_, the story that inspired _Indiana Jones_, and thus Daring Do.

"Black lotus" and "the pyramid of N'Gala the Mad" is a little Easter egg from my favorite Robert E. Howard, "The Queen of the Black Coast."

The wave of magic that passes over Kino of course references M. A. Larson's excellent "The Return of Harmony."

"Only the unloved hate..." is a salute to the inspiration behind Kino's big speech, Chaplain's magnificent _The Great Dictator._ If you're unfamiliar, go watch that speech on Youtube right now, because it automatically makes you a better person.

"We're a Long Way From Equestria" is a tear-jerking song written by "Mandopony." I wrote the speech while listening to an instrumental version available on Youtube.

"Lili Marleen," by Hans Leip and Norbert Schultz, was famous for being popular on both sides of the Second World War. Ross Parker and Hughie Charles' "We'll Meet Again," is the signature song of Dame Vera Lynn.

Not much to add with "On the Wing." It violates the show-don't-tell rule, but this is just how the story happened to me. Perhaps I'll fill in this sketch of Kino's life in future stories. With Kino surviving the death I'd planned for her, I needed a new ending. I like this one better.

Alternate realities, timelines, and eigenstates are concepts I'm pretty shaky on, so if you're a cosmologist or quantum physicist, just roll with me.

Celestia and Luna's Greek equivalents would of course be Helios, and his sister Selene.

Some four billion years from now, our Sun will be expanding toward its red-giant stage, and boil away the Earth's oceans. Hopefully, humanity's descendants, likely no longer remotely human, will be traveling the galaxy. At the same time, our Milky Way will be colliding with Andromeda. The odds of this destroying any star systems in the process are slim, because interstellar space is just that vast. Perhaps this will be an exciting time for our descendants.

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><p><strong><em>Final Reflections<em>**

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><p>Usually, when I write stories, I begin with two ingredients: first, a theme - what is this story about... <em>really<em> about underneath all the plot-events? Second, how will it end? That's the advice of Lajos Egri and William Goldman, respectively. If you want to learn to write stories, I enthusiastically recommend them. (If I may presume, my other bit of advice would be to _read_ everything you can - Basho and Khayyam, Hawthorne and Howard, Shakespeare and Gaiman, and everything in between! If it speaks to you, it_ will _be useful later!)

I've reached a stage where storytelling feels so natural to me that I don't necessarily write the ending first anymore. Most recently, themes have begun to emerge organically from characters, rather than mechanistically from a preordained idea. This is progress, I think. But I would not recommend a writer seek this as a goal. Rather, focus on the story you're writing right now, make it as good as you can, and let such things come naturally, if they do, having written story after story. There's also a lovely bit of advice from Alan Moore to experiment. Try new things! Never settle into a comfy rut. For example, my little game of mimicking writers I admire proved so useful, I'd recommend it to anybody searching for their own artistic voice. I can point to sentences in "On the Wing" and say, "listen... that's Bradbury, that's Lovecraft, and there's Tolkien! Can you hear them? They live on, in me."

When I began my own journey here on Fanfiction back in 2009, I had absolutely no idea that I'd write so many tales. Each came knocking, one after the other, and I dutifully took dictation. If you've read the lot (and thank you,) you've seen how each ends, and now how the entire arc ends. Has a unifying theme emerged? What is the meaning of all this?

On some reflection, I have _my_ answer. I hasten to add this is not the correct answer. For example, I shared my own interpretation of stories like _Haibane Renmei_ and _Friendship is Magic_, but it's possible the writers involved would have no idea what I was talking about, or might even disagree with me, like Marshall McCluhan telling off that teacher in _Annie Hall._ Unlike McCluhan, if you found some other interpretation, I'd love to hear all about it.

In the case of Gia from the _Old Haunts_ arc, I think she was cut off by her parents, even before we met her, from that part of herself Jung called the Shadow. She struggled so hard to be "perfect" for them that she suppressed all her human frailties, her sexual desires, and her anger. Tisiphone is the personification of those amputated parts of herself. Like Captain Kirk in Richard Matheson's very good _Star Trek_ episode "The Enemy Within," Gia is weakened because she is not whole, and faces her wild dark side. Unlike the Captain, she has no convenient transporter, so her story is about _how_ she manages to re-integrate herself into a single, whole and fully-functioning being. We live in a world where we must often, faced with poverty or authority, swallow our completely justified outrage, and pretend. I suspect many, many people can sympathize with Gia's plight.

Kino also has a severed relationship... with humanity. After a chain-reaction of traumas, but also due to innate tendencies that had other children calling her "gloomy," she finds herself disconnected from humanity at large, and even routinely disconnects from her _own_ humanity. Sometimes, like when she pets the dog Riku, she's whole and adorable. But under stress, like when she butchers a rabbit or eats a scorpion, she "unplugs," and her behavior becomes mechanical, a part-time psychopath, meaning not the homicidal mania of movies and TV, but shallow emotions and diminished empathy.

Her story, in both _Dead Man's Curve_ and _Bird of Time_, is about her struggle to reconnect with her own humanity, and with humanity at large. It's a hard journey with many setbacks. The haibane awaken in her the _desire_ to do so. She begins to settle in with a primitive tribe, but Corina interrupts this. Corina offers Kino a place, but really only wants to use her. Kino bonds with Gia and has a brief fling, but that blows up in their faces.

Kino's rite of passage extinguishes her fears, only for the plane trip to reveal she's not fearless after all. With the horrible events in Kelbright, she's ready to give up, and Hermes' account of the barbarity he's witnessed only reinforces her alienation. But like the haibane, the ponies come to Kino's rescue, and inspire her to, at last, genuinely accept the friendships she's been offered. She repents of her dismissive coldness, and rejoins the human race. With her friends' help, she tries to pass on her gift to the brutalized Tatana.

Did I have this arc planned? Heavens, no! Am I pleased by it? Oh yes, very much so! I'm startled by how well everything's worked out. I hope that if you find yourself in a similar state to either Kino or Gia, you will find solace and useful guidance in their journeys. That is what stories are for.

With reviewers like GDeacur saying, "I borrowed a few books from the library this week that weren't as well written," or Lehst asking me for original work, I'm due and overdue to pursue my own writing again. I'm working on a non-fiction book now, I hope to convert my languishing screenplays into novels, and I think I might just retool my Kino and Gia stories into something publishable. Then... who knows?

Wish me luck, and thanks for all your kind words.

October 1st, 2014

_— The Blue Footed Booby_

_._


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